did all hold baronies, which, according to the analogy of lay
peerages, were sufficient to give them such a share in the legislature.
Nevertheless, I think that this is rather too contracted a view of the
rights of the English hierarchy, and, indeed, by implication, of the
peerage. For a great council of advice and assent in matters of
legislation or national importance was essential to all the northern
governments. And all of them, except, perhaps, the Lombards, invited the
superior ecclesiastics to their councils; not upon any feudal notions,
which at that time had hardly begun to prevail, but chiefly as
representatives of the church and of religion itself; next, as more
learned and enlightened counsellors than the lay nobility; and in some
degree, no doubt, as rich proprietors of land. It will be remembered
also that ecclesiastical and temporal affairs were originally decided in
the same assemblies, both upon the continent and in England. The Norman
Conquest, which destroyed the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and substituted a
new race in their stead, could not affect the immortality of church
possessions. The bishops of William's age were entitled to sit in his
councils by the general custom of Europe, and by the common law of
England, which the Conquest did not overturn.[5] Some smaller arguments
might be urged against the supposition that their legislative rights are
merely baronial; such as that the guardian of the spiritualities was
commonly summoned to parliament during the vacancy of a bishopric, and
that the five sees created by Henry VIII. have no baronies annexed to
them;[6] but the former reasoning appears less technical and
confined.[7]

Next to these spiritual lords are the earls and barons, or lay peerage
of England. The former dignity was, perhaps, not so merely official as
in the Saxon times, although the earl was entitled to the third penny of
all emoluments arising from the administration of justice in the
county-courts, and might, perhaps, command the militia of his county,
when it was called forth.[8] Every earl was also a baron, and held an
honour or barony of the crown, for which he paid a higher relief than an
ordinary baron, probably on account of the profits of his earldom. I
will not pretend to say whether titular earldoms, absolutely distinct
from the lieutenancy of a county, were as ancient as the Conquest, which
Madox seems to think, or were considered as irregular so late as Henry
II., according